Birthright Israel, Revisited: Out of Step Jew discusses ways of revamping Birthright Israel to make the program more effective. The blog also contains an open letter to Michael Steinhardt, the major benefactor of the program. In summary, OSJ suggests that Birthright become something that students would have to work to attain, and that would entail a more extended commitment than a ten-day trip. This change, it is argued, would make the program more effective by making the experience more valuable for its recipients.

My Birthright Israel experience was a dramatic one which I won't soon forget. This is the hopeful goal of Birthright: that the mostly secular Jews who take the trip will regain a connection with their heritage such that they will become more observant, fight assimilation, and marry another Jew. The problem which OSJ seeks to rectify is that some of the trip recipients see it just as a free vacation, and end up just as secular when they ultimately marry a non-Jew and have non-Jewish children.

The problem with OSJ's proposal is that Birthright seeks to locate the "susceptible" (used in a positive, not negative sense) Jewish youth and target them for intense indoctrination (again, not necessarily a bad thing). The goal of Birthright is different from OSJ's: to target the UNinterested kids who wouldn't go to Hillel or work to be involved with an Israel program. Birthright hopes that some number of these kids will go to Israel, fall in love with Judaism, and never look back. Although it's inevitable that some (many?) of the Birthright recipients won't manifest any demonstrable change in behavior, most align politically with Israel (an effect which won't benefit Israel for a decade or more), I am one of the "success stories."

OSJ cites what he sees as lackluster success statistics as evidence that Birthright, in its current incarnation, is a failure. While it might or might not be true that Birthright isn't working, low numbers don't indicate that. We have to make a conscious choice: Should we make the religious Jewish community more observant, or should we try to bring some secular Jews into the fold? I agree that it might be reasonable to ask recipients to commit to becoming more involved in their community (by giving them a choice of ways to become involved, not requiring classes or doing things that will make the program inaccessible). But considering that most twentysomethings with a strong Jewish identity (the ones who would do work to get the Israel trip or commit to an extended course of study) aren't going to intermarry or abdicate their Judaism, I argue that Birthright, in its current incarnation, has the right idea.